


may all acquaintance be forgot

by redkay



Category: Shameless (TV), Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 10:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redkay/pseuds/redkay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian thinks he’s lying, but he doesn’t <i>know</i> and it’s driving him fucking insane.</p>
<p>Written for Day 5 of Gallavich Week 'my creys.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	may all acquaintance be forgot

He knows better than to kiss by now, but Ian trails his lips down Mickey’s chest softly, with just enough pressure to make his intent known. Mickey growls and pushes his head down, his fingers curling slightly in his hair.

“Get on with it,” he says, and Ian does. 

The night air is cool, but beads of sweat still trickle down Ian’s neck. Resting his head against the fence, he sees the whole summer stretched out before them and smiles.

“Where’d you learn to give head like that?” Mickey demands, his pupils blown.

“Kash.” Kash had taught him nearly everything he knew, was his first real relationship. But Kash was a coward and Kash was long gone.

He catches Mickey watching him through heavily lidded eyes, but he looks away immediately. “We’re out of booze,” he says, and Ian hears it for the excuse it is.

“Come to the store at nine tomorrow.” He’s nearly certain he’ll be able to talk Linda into it by then. “Maybe ten.” Mickey gives him the finger as he leaves.

Ian surveys the mess they’ve left behind, the scattered beer cans and the used condoms Lip had stuck in his wallet that morning with a frown. It’s proof of what they did and Ian leaves it there for the little league kids to find in the morning. 

The lights are off in his room, but Lip is waiting up for him anyway. 

“Have fun?” he asks, and Ian turns his back on his brother to hide the bruises on his hips. 

“Sure.” Lip sighs loudly but Ian isn’t in the mood. For months his thing with Mickey has been a joke to Lip, his baby brother getting off with the town thug. But now that Mickey's out, suddenly he wants to take it seriously and pull the protective big brother card. Ian shucks off his pants and climbs into bed without another word.

**

The genius of having Mickey work at the store, Ian discovers, is that it means he can’t just walk away after they fuck. The moment this registers for Mickey—halfway out of the storeroom with his security vest in his hand and a constipated expression on his face—is tucked safely away in Ian’s memories.

For the first day or so, Mickey tries to make up for this strategic error by only fucking him at the very end of his shift, but that plan falls by the wayside quickly. Instead, gradually, the habit of sticking around spills over into their lives, until they’re walking around the city after the workday is over, pointing out the easiest cars to steal.

These nights are Ian’s favorites; the ones when Mickey leans up against the brick wall of the store while Ian locks up, cigarette dancing between his lips, and pretends not to listen to Ian talk about school and Lip and Mandy.

“Of course she is,” Mickey says one night when Ian mentions Mandy getting pissed at him for not spending more time with her. “She’s fucking in love with you, isn’t she?” He spits the words into the pavement like they’re a curse.

“No she’s not,” Ian laughs. “If anything, she has a thing for Lip.” 

“Whatever, man.” Mickey doesn’t believe him, flicks some cigarette ash in his eye, but Ian knows better.

He knows what Mandy is trying to keep a secret from him; that she and Lip have started fucking behind his back. They weren’t exactly quiet about it, and unlike Mandy he actually possesses a functioning nose. 

He knows Lip thinks that its just sex, and he knows Mandy’s starting to get attached. He wants to yell at Lip for toying with her, but then he thinks of Kash and can’t make himself do it. With Kash he was always in control, always knew what to expect. He had a wife and a family and Ian knew where he stood. Kash was in love with him, and Ian had liked him a lot, until he didn’t anymore.

He knows Lip’s right, that he likes Mickey way more than the other boy likes him and he needs to put an end to it before it goes any further. But then sometimes Mickey stares a beat too long, or laughs a bit too loud, and Ian thinks he might not know anything at all. 

The whole lot of them are such a tangled mess, and none of them have who or what they want. But Ian’s so fucking close, and he thinks maybe that’s good enough for now.

** 

“Why do you do this to yourself?” He’s echoing Fiona, Kevin, Vee, everyone who’s talked to Lip in the past few months but he can’t help it. He feels like he’s watching Lip self-destruct in slow motion, throwing everything he has down the drain with gleeful abandon, and all for Karen fucking Jackson. It’s sickening.

“It’s just a doctor’s appointment man, and it’s none of your business.” Lip’s voice is light, but there’s a warning in his tone that Ian ignores. They’ve only just made up and Ian’s already violating the unspoken agreement to stay out of each other’s relationships.

“She’s married, Lip. And not to you. Let Jody take her to her doctor appointments.”

“She doesn’t want him.” Lip finally succeeds in pulling on his too small shoes and heads out the door. Ian tags along like he’s still twelve and can’t think of anything better than following his big brother aimlessly around town.

“She doesn’t want you either.” With a sigh, Ian scrubs a hand across his face and tries a kinder approach. “I know you like her, but she doesn’t care about you. Not like that, anyway. And you can’t make her through sheer force of will.”

Lip laughs, cold and mean. “Jesus, look in a fucking mirror, would you?” He yanks Debbie’s bike out of its lock and rides down the street, leaving Ian frozen in their front yard.

Mickey doesn’t say much when they meet up that night, though he seems to sense something’s wrong. He’s not any nicer than usual; he doesn’t even let Ian finish off the last can of beer. But he bites down extra hard in the alley behind the drugstore, until Ian’s sure he’ll bruise and he wonders if it means something.

“Want to catch a movie?” he tries, and maybe he sounds too hopeful or something, cause Mickey just snorts and throws the butt of his cigarette at him. 

“Fuck off.”

When he gets home, earlier than normal, the TV is on and Lip is dozing off on the couch, a bottle of beer held precariously between his index and middle fingers. There are dark circles under his eyes, and the pictures on the screen bounce off his face. Suddenly it hits Ian that maybe his big brother is as lost as the rest of them, and he pushes the thought down violently.

He shuts the door to announce his presence and Lip jerks up. “Hey,” he says, and scoots over to make room. After a pause that lasts only a moment, Ian sits down next to him and ignores Lip’s protests to take a swig out of his beer.

A week later, Mickey slams the door in his face and Lip does the same in Fiona’s. There’s a small, sick part of him that’s glad his brother’s gone if it means he doesn’t have to hear _I told you so_.

**

It’s well into winter that the topic finally does come up. Everything’s calmed down by then—Karen’s had her baby, Monica’s skipped town again, Ian’s done an admirable job at faking surprise and squashing his own guilt when Mandy tells him about her and Lip.

“Jimmy said I could borrow his car,” Lip says one December afternoon while Ian checks his pre-calc answers in the back of his textbook, groaning every few minutes.

“Stolen or legal?”

“Very funny. You should be nice, or I won’t take you to visit your boyfriend in the clink.”

He’s abruptly aware that Lip is watching him carefully, gauging his reaction. With great effort, he keeps his voice level and says, “No thanks.”

Lip studies him for another long minute, while Ian crosses out incorrect equations and tries not to wonder what his brother can see written on his face.

“Right,” Lip mutters at last, and grabs Ian by the scruff of the neck. “Put that away, let’s go do something.”

It’s been months, Karen’s gone, he’s Lip’s partner in crime again, and if Mickey’s words still echo in his head sometimes, it’s not nearly as often as they used to. Ian thinks maybe he never needed him anyway, that this was the way it was always meant to be.

**

Ian really did have some vague intention of staying away from Mickey that summer. It’s just, Mickey getting out four months early and interrupting him mid-fuck was not part of any plan he’d concocted.

So the fact that it only takes about thirty seconds to fall back into old habits isn’t entirely his fault.

“You ready to go again?” 

Ian shakes his head and grabs his bag, determined not to give an inch. “Can’t. Gotta get to work.” 

“Ah. About that.” Mickey’s smirking and Ian has a strong urge to throw something at his head, to yell that _no,_ he can’t just come back after months and expect everything to be exactly the same, expect Ian to have just been waiting for him this whole time like some kicked puppy.

“Come on,” is what comes out of his mouth though, and Mickey tags along to the store, making fun of Ian’s military style haircut the whole way.

“I haven’t just been waiting,” Ian slurs. Linda put them on inventory duty that as punishment and Ian dug out the good liquor Kash stashed in the storeroom as reward for a job not entirely done. 

Mickey, naturally, is no help at all, skimming absently through one of Kash’s old porn magazines. Ian doesn’t think Mickey’s all that drunk, but he’s almost giddy nonetheless. Should be, he supposes, since he’s been fucked three times that day already. 

“Whatever, man. Think we could do this?” He’s pointing to something that Ian’s pretty sure isn’t physically possible with a rare, unguarded expression.

“I’m serious. I’m not, you can’t. Ugh.” He takes another swig and marks a tally on the inventory sheet, which is probably not how this is supposed to work. “I’m only doing this because I don’t have anything better going on right now.”

It’s sadly true; he hasn’t found a decent lay in ages. But Mickey just laughs at him, a little condescendingly, and says, “Yeah, me too. Now this we could definitely do, look.”

Ian thinks he’s lying, but he doesn’t _know_ and it’s driving him fucking insane.

But Linda’s got plenty of whipped cream in stock, so they do the stupid porn thing, and yeah, it’s kind of amazing.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lip says, his legs dangling over the side of his bed while Ian clumsily unties his shoes. 

“I don’t,” he laughs, because he really fucking doesn’t.

He can feel Lip’s gaze boring a hole into the back of his head until he drifts off.

**

“Stop laughing,” Ian says, irritated. He doesn’t know what possessed him to tell Mickey about this. “My brother won’t even look at me, and Jimmy keeps staring.” 

“Maybe it runs in the family,” Mickey manages through his snickering. “He actually tried to stick it in Lip? Fuck, I would’ve paid to see that.”

Ian wrinkles his nose. “That’s disgusting. This is all your fault.”

“How the fuck is _your_ creepy ex trying to make the moves on _your_ asshole brother _my _fault?”__

__“It just is,” Ian grumbles. He figures that Mickey not wanting him to see anyone else and expressing it in his own weird, violent way should count for something. But telling him that he’d stopped seeing Ned for him would just send Mickey into a tailspin of denial, and Ian already has a headache._ _

__“You’re such a pussy,” Mickey decides, like he doesn’t say that twice a day anyway. “Lip will get over it.”_ _

__“He hates everyone I date.”_ _

__“Well you do date assholes,” Mickey says with a smirk, and fuck if Ian knows what to make of that._ _

__**_ _

__It’s Lip who finds him, of course._ _

__He kneels down on the tile of the stupid communal bathroom that got him into this mess in the first place and tugs the towel out of Ian’s hand. His hands are surprisingly gentle when he starts wiping the blood off his face and chest._ _

__Ian waits, but for once Lip doesn’t say anything, not even _I told you so_. And if there are tears mixed in with the blood and bruises, he pretends not to notice. _ _

__His skin feels raw (and it’s nothing compared to what he’ll feel when it’s Mickey who put the bruises there, but he doesn’t know that yet) and he can’t stop seeing Mickey’s wrecked face, the deadness in his eyes, Terry’s fucking smirk through the whole thing._ _

__And he hates himself a little for being so weak because he can hear Mickey calling him a pussy in the back of his head, but he buries his face in Lip’s shoulder, staining his shirt with blood and snot, and lets his brother hold him like he hasn’t since he was a kid._ _

__It’s sort of ironic, in an exceptionally painful kind of way. For months, years even, Ian agonized over never knowing how Mickey felt. But now without a doubt, he knows Mickey’s in love with him._ _

__And it makes it so much fucking worse he can barely breathe._ _

__Maybe if it hadn’t been so good near the end, if Mickey hadn’t kissed him and given him a taste of what he could have had before Terry ripped it away, maybe then this wouldn’t hurt so much._ _

__“It’s okay,” Lip murmurs into his hair, confused but comforting all the same. “I got you.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure what this is, but I wanted to contribute something to Gallavich week, and this is what came out. I'll just call it a short tribute to two of my two favorite relationships on the show. Feedback is highly appreciated :)


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